The Roles of Prototypes in Medical Case-Based Reasoning Systems

In this paper we discuss the importance to create prototypes automatically within Case-Based Reasoning systems. We present some general ideas about prototypes deduced from analyses of our experiences with prototype designs in domain specific medical CBR systems. Although we can only argue for the usefulness of prototypes in medical domains, we believe the same goes for some other domains as well. Furthermore, we claim that the generation of prototypes is an adequate technique to learn the intrinsic case knowledge, especially if the (medical) domain theory